‘I don’t need uniform. I need leather,’ she screamed at her mother, who was attempting to put an end to our play date so she could take Grace back-to-school shopping in town. ‘Xena would never love Gabrielle if she were stuck in a blue-andwhite pinafore and ankle socks.’
‘And patent shoes.’ I was grinning, but Grace’s mum, usually so un-stormy, shot me this look like she might go a little warrior herself if we didn’t stop with the dramatics.
Even now, Grace pulls the same sulk face as she did back then, her bottom lip pushed out to bare saliva that glistens as it quivers with high-intensity am-dram grief. And god, that pout, it literally pulls the strings on my heart so that whatever she’s feeling, I’m feeling too. And my arms have that involuntary reflex thing, like when a doctor bangs on your knee, so I’ve no choice but to pull her into a hug, not giving a toss about the snot stain she leaves on my top, cos she is Grace Izzy Ashdown and Grace Izzy Ashdown could never do anything to seriously rock our boat.
Our boat is like the most solid unsinkable boat on the water.
Or it was. These days, the air between us is sort of choppy, and my tummy does that lurchy seasick thing when I lie in bed at night wondering what she’s up to with Nell. Because while Grace came out when she was, like, seven, she’s never had a girlfriend until now, not a real one anyway, only me dressed up as Gabrielle and I’m no way near as good an actress as Grace and no way near as hot as Gabrielle, so in Grace’s eyes at least we were a flop. Romantically, I mean. In every other way, Grace and I have been Academy gold. If there were an Oscar for friendship, we’d have been on that stage shedding our tears and giving our thanks for the last twelve years in a row. Seriously. Even the year she knocked out my two front teeth.
She didn’t punch me or anything. Grace doesn’t have a violent bone in her body, and believe me, I’d know a violent bone if I saw one. We were running long loops around the playground, chasing girls and boys for kisses, arms in the air like we just didn’t care until Grace suddenly did. Care, I mean. Because I was on the brink of catching Emily Lamb, and Emily Lamb, with that cropped blonde hair and those green eyes with a hint of blue – well, Emily Lamb was the closest thing to Gabrielle Grace had ever seen. And while it wasn’t like the kisses were proper kisses or that Grace was even thinking the full-on lusty thoughts she thinks now, what it was, she says with ten years of hindsight, was her very first prick of gut-blasting jealousy, different to the urge to snatch a toy or whine because her sister had way more custard with her pudding than she did.
She’d only meant to pull me back, not down, and because no one had yet figured out that Grace’s eyesight was about as good as a deep-sea fangtooth fish’s, she wasn’t wearing glasses and didn’t notice that I’d made my catch perilously close to the climbing frame and that if I were to fall, which I did, I could whack my face on the slide, which I did, and never see my two front teeth again, which I didn’t. And because no one had yet figured out that Reuben Johnson’s brain was as dopey as a panda’s, no one thought to stop him when he picked up my two front teeth, gave them an actual kiss and tossed them in the conifers so they were gone for good.
‘I’m really sorry, Iz,’ she said, her fingers assessing the damage as they poked about in my wound. ‘I’m such a…’ Grace wasn’t (and still isn’t) often stuck for words. But back then, as my empty-grave gums coloured her nails the perfect shade of danger, she struggled to define her guilt. ‘I’m a…I’m…I –’
‘Give Izzy some space, please!’ Mrs Taylor, of all people, should have known Grace and I never gave each other space. If we could have been stuck at the hip, literally, I swear we’d have slapped on the glue. Grace had even played thick in maths, faked confusion over a pie chart in an attempt to drop down to my set, but our teacher had had none of it because, as we’d once overheard her reminding her colleaguers in the staffroom, Mrs Taylor was ‘no goddamn fool’.
‘You’re my goddamn best friend.’ Grace and I would try out Mrs Taylor’s American accent and American swears at playtime.
‘You’re my goddamn hero.’
‘You’re my goddamn favourite person in the whole goddamn world.’
‘I’m goddamn Callisto,’ Grace sobbed when Mrs Taylor peeled her away from my gappy mouth and she was under threat of being relegated to bystander like everyone else. Only she was never like everyone else. For a start, everyone else had no idea who or what Callisto was. Grace explained. ‘Callisto is the bloodiest warlord of all time – she’s taken Xena down over and over. She’s so mean.’ No one but me was any the wiser. And Mrs Taylor, who was goddamn tutting and goddamn shaking her head, had quite clearly had e-goddamn-nough.
But I can’t see how anyone could ever have enough of Grace. I mean, look at Nell. She’s with my best friend all the time. Literally always hand in hand with her. Thing is, when Nell reaches out for Grace, it never seems needy. Nell’s too cool for that maybe. Too sexy too, like so sexy you don’t have to be gay to appreciate it. And it’s not that she’s especially pretty – it’s something else. Her smile perhaps, how it comes so easily and so authentically no matter who she’s talking to; how her voice isn’t dampened by stumbles and sheepishness with someone new. You can tell Nell’s listening, and not just listening out for a lull to switch the conversation to her, but really taking it in. It doesn’t bother me so much when it’s me or one of Grace’s other friends she’s speaking with, but when Nell and Grace are in deep communion – ‘chatting’ doesn’t do the way they talk justice – I choke because it’s so obvious, isn’t it, how much more Grace has with Nell now than she’s ever had with me.
I goddamn miss her. So goddamn much.
My phone, when I pick it up to message Jacob, is like the tarantula I held at some zoo as a kid. All threat and venom, and touching it feels all kinds of wrong.
Tonight then. 9?
I watch the screen for an answer, which doesn’t come.
Is that it? Am I off the hook?
I take another shower. Hotter this time. So hot my skin’s like one of those umbrellas that changes colour when wet. My chest and my belly turning from chalky mass to scarlet mass in the rush of the water, which, no matter how high I turn the dial on the shower, still can’t shift the stickiness of Jacob’s hands and mouth and his tongue that slicked those words: ‘Relax, Izzy. It’ll be so much better if you just fucking relax.’ Cos those words, they’re as wedged as the earplugs I’ve used on the worst kinds of nights when Daniel’s done what he’s done, and he’s left, and Mum’s crying is as quiet as she can make it, but for all her effort, that sinking weep of hers seeps through the walls like blood on toilet paper.
I leave the water running as I fetch the flannel from the sink, grateful for the steam in the mirror, more grateful even for the barrier the cloth puts between my hands and my flesh, which still stinks of Jacob. Which will stink of him again tonight. Which might always stink of him. Might always feel like him. Like some shitty tattoo. Or the needle that draws it. A million pinpricks every time something – a flannel, body wash, underwear – touches me there.